Follow Andy on his mission through letters and photos. July 10, 2013:
The adventure begins!!

Monday, March 3, 2014

February 17, 2014

Dear Family,

This week was a pretty good first full week in Täby! I did get your Valentine's package and I loved it! Thanks so much! You guys are the best! I really liked the one that Estee did that tricked me! It said like I love you, look on other side or something like that and then you turn it around and it says ha ha ha ha. She is a trickster! Also thanks for the pics of that one guy from Utah State with the best red flat top of all time! So funny! I also loved to see all the different pictures of you guys and the Bugs Bunny quotes were pretty good too :) I am still in the process of looking up all the scriptures on them. Also I appreciated the nice comments that Abby and Jake wrote too like "I brag about you to all my friends" and "I miss going skiing with you" I sure am grateful for my family!

Some highlights from this week were that we taught this cool guy named J who is from Cuba and we will see how interested he is in progressing. He is a really nice guy who knows all these different languages and loves to talk to us.

I don't know if I have told you guys this but we are doing an open church thing in the mission where they want the doors to be unlocked and open so that people walking by and feel free to come in if they want. On Wednesday we did that and then also had scheduled this lady named Anne-Kristin to come and do some family history work with another member. I think she really liked it building her family tree on the website. Also the member there was a nice older lady and she was having me look up information on our ancestors (the one's from Alingsås, who are related to the Bensen line) on this one program which had pictures of really old Swedish records so we were able to find a few names on there but they were already on the website. Basically a large amount of family history work has been done for me! Oh and also on the subject of family history I found out that Hans Jorgensen, our ancestor who gives us the Jorgensen name, is from Ödense, Denmark which is where Elder Held comes from! It is kinda a funny coincidence.

We also had a zone training this week where I got to meet everyone in the Stockholm zone which was pretty cool. It was pretty nice not to have to travel five hours to get to the center point of the zone like it was up in Luleå! After we went to a Chinese buffet place for lunch that was delicious :) It is still funny to me that here there are never free refills! Still it was pretty good. On the way back we got to through the Stockholm subway system which is so nice. They have so many underground tunnels and the whole city pretty much runs on them. It kinda reminds me of that time in Washington DC when we all went on the train system there with all our luggage and how hot it was hahaha. When I was transferring up to Luleå I had to go on these with all my bags and it is kinda a pain but with only a backpack they aren't so bad to go on.

On Friday we had a FHE with one of the families in the ward. We taught a lesson about communication with God through prayer and the scriptures. To help illustrate this we played a game where there are 3 people and one is like the detective and is interrogating another person (the witness) sitting in a chair in front of him. The third person is standing behind the detective and has to act out what the answers are to the detective's questions. A murder has happened and the witness saw it, so the detective asks where it happened, with what, and who. The witness has to guess what the third person is trying to tell them to tell the detective. It is a pretty fun game that went well.

The weather here in Stockholm has been pretty boring weather. Around 32 degrees everyday and then always cloudy...also rainy every few days. The trees still all look dead and so it doesn't look very pretty out yet. The winters here aren't my favorite, kinda reminds me of Michigan actually. Just long, but not much snow.

Dad, I am glad that you are feeling better finally. I have been especially praying this week that you get better so I am glad that it happened! Also I actually could read your letter quite well. That is a pretty neat app I think. Hopefully the stylus think starts working better! But I am enjoying the new ward. It isn't too big but it is large for Sweden and it is a nice place. It was the same building where they did the first day orientation stuff and so for a while I couldn't shake the feeling that it was like a place of excitement and some anxiety for where my first area was going to be. It seems to me that the Youth are pretty much the same here that they are back home. Maybe not quite as many in numbers, but they are all nice. There are a few Americans in the ward that are here for work too including our ward mission leader who works for Abbot I think, that one company that makes drugs and other medical stuff.

Oh and President Newell being in the same ward as me is very intimidating, at least to me haha. He is a very nice and loving man, but actually he hasn't been to church yet while I have been there. Apparently he travels around a lot to go visit the different wards, so that puts less pressure on me!

But I really like being with Elder Held. He is just a nice guy and wants to go work hard and be his best! He has been getting me a little more excited to lift weights when I get home, and he has been teaching me some Danish. Danish pronunciation is crazy! It sounds like a bunch of primitive vowels and groans put into a language! But I have been trying to say a few things and it doesn't sound Danish at all. It is funny because when we talk to people sometimes his accent is too strong for them to understand what he is saying in Swedish even though I think he is a lot better at Swedish than me because a lot of the vocab is the same in Danish and in Swedish. But his family are all members and his plans after the mission are schooling. He says that he really likes astronomy but also physics, chemistry and biology. I told him he should think about a doctor because if I remember right those are pretty much all the main categories of the MCAT haha.

That is cool that you could go to Jake's farewell talk. That is good that he is excited to leave to Chicago! What a great place! I think Chicago is one of my favorite big cities. Also I will have to see how Aaron is doing. He didn't leave much longer after I did. I have seen Elder Lambson around every once in a while, and he is fun to see and talk with. I think he is actually training a missionary right now.

Mom, that is too bad that you are feeling sick. I will have to pray especially for that this week instead of Dad's sickness! I hope that you feel better soon :) Also I am glad that it was fun to go to Estee's class this week to help with the party! And way to go helping Dad run the office and stuff! Sounds busy as usual.

Abby- It sounds like school is always ridiculously busy but I hope you're enjoying it! I'm sure you are! Have fun at your dance this week, which dance is it? I am happy that it was fun to go to that concert with Dad and that fancy restaurant and test drive the Jaguar! Keep being the great person you are!

Jake- Hope you had fun skiing today! I miss going skiing with you too! When I come back we will go a ton and you will probably be better than I am. You will need to teach me all the cool jumps that you will be able to do! haha I also think that those Michigan pants are awesome that you made! Have a great week!

Estee- How was your Valentine Day party with Mom there!? Was it really fun? Is your lego class still fun? Are you going on lots of play dates? Do you like your new school still? I really liked your hearts that you sent :)

Well hope you all have a great week! You are all in my prayers and I love you sooo much! Sorry that this email is a little long...